I'm the author of "Fobbit" (Grove/Atlantic), a comedy about the Iraq War. "Fobbit" was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, a Montana Honor Book, and a finalist in the L. A. Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. It was also selected as a "best" or "favorite" book of 2012 by Paste Magazine, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and January Magazine. You can see a trailer for "Fobbit" here: http://youtu.be/7x9d9UcOLUcMy short stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, Salon, Electric Literature, Salamander, Connecticut Review, The Greensboro Review, The Literarian, The Missouri Review, and other literary quarterlies. I regularly blog about the literary life at The Quivering PenI retired in 2008 after a 20-year career in the active-duty Army as a journalist. I was named the Department of Defense's Military Journalist of the Year in 1994 and received several other military commendations throughout my career. My tours of duty took me to Thailand, Japan, the Comoros Islands, Alaska, Texas, Georgia and The Pentagon (where my office was located at exactly the "ground zero" of 9/11--though I didn't start working there until 2006). In 2005, I joined the 3rd Infantry Division and deployed to Baghdad in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The journal I kept during that year formed the blueprint for the novel which would later become known as "Fobbit."I was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Jackson, Wyoming. I earned a BA in English from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. I now live in Butte, Montana with my wife. I'm working on a draft of my next novel, a screwball comedy about a stuntman in 1940s-era Hollywood.